After Spanish users increasingly reported being barred from the site, yesterday ISP Vodafone denied it had taken any action against The Pirate Bay. Today, however, the company admits that it is blocking the site after being ordered to do so by the Spanish government.

After years of developing a reputation as a piracy safe-haven, in recent times Spain has found itself under intense pressure to clamp down on copyright infringement.

After a serious of tweaks and adjustments to local copyright law, January 1st the country introduced tough new legislation backed up by hefty punishments for site operators.

Potential €600,000 fines were enough to scare some sites offline. Others, such as Pablo Soto’s Torrents.fm, disappeared without comment. While the climate in Spain is clearly a different one in 2015, there are now fresh signs of a new crackdown.

Spanish users of local ISP Vodafone have been reporting that their visits to The Pirate Bay are being redirected to a new URL – Castor.vodafone.es. Domain stats reveal that ThePirateBay.se and ThePirateBay.org are indeed two of the top referrers to that URL and that 100% of its traffic comes from Spain.

When Vodafone users began accusing their ISP of blocking The Pirate Bay without a court order, local media approached Vodafone for comment. In a statement yesterday the ISP said it had no knowledge of any blockade. This morning, however, Vodafone changed its mind.

The company now confirms it has received a blocking order from the Spanish government. Vodafone says that it has an obligation to comply with an order “issued by a competent authority”, in this case, the Ministry of Culture.

“In the current Copyright Act, there is a list of authorities who can order the blocking of a website to comply with legislation. That’s what we did,” a source at the company said.

Speaking with Gizmodo in Spain, Vodafone could not confirm the exact date when it began blocking the site but said it complied with the official request around Christmas. That would certainly fall into line with early problems experienced by some users.

It is currently unclear whether other ISPs in Spain have received the same instructions from the Ministry of Culture since ThePirateBay.se remains accessible via all ISPs except Vodafone.

Other major ISPs including Movistar and Orange say they cannot currently confirm if they have received similar blocking instructions from the government.

Today The Pirate Bay remains non-functional as a torrent site but its landing page, currently adorned with a phoenix, suggests a return to glory this coming weekend. If it does, Vodafone users will need a workaround.

Update: In an update Vodafone the company said that it received an indication that The Pirate Bay should be blocked last summer. However, no official request was made so the company has now unblocked the site, temporarily at least.

“We have been too diligent, we performed an adequate interpretation of the situation, so we will lift the blockade of The Pirate Bay until we receive the warrant,” official sources say.